while investigating this new deal, it's been said that you might need a new cpu and ram to match the motherboard. from Tom's hardware:

Quote

After all, simply upgrading to a new motherboard isn't the end of the line - you'll almost certainly need a new processor, new RAM, a new graphics card, probably a new power supply and perhaps even a new case.

i haven't read much about this for certain though, and the other articles (anandtech) don't address this.

my guess is that you wouldn't need a new cpu/ram as the only thing changing in terms of physical architecture is the motherbords pci-e/video card.

does anyone have a definitive answer about this and where would this information be located? tia

As far as I can tell, and it seems to make sense, is that if you upgrade to a PCIe motherboard you can retain the same CPU and RAM as the bus architecture for these stay the same. What is seeing a signifcant change is the architecture for your periperals like sound card, network card and the big one the Video card. That being said you will most likely want to take advantage of the PCIe and purchase a new video card.

I dont know a whole lot about what Intel boards have to offer as I am an AMD guy( sorry Paulbot). For AMD the two big contenders right now, or actually in the next several weeks are Nvidia Nforce4 boards and ASUS. Last I checked Nvidia released reference boards for 2 of their 3 new chipsets Nforce4 and Nforce4 Ultra. They will also be releasing an Nforce4 SLI chipset. Asus has a board out in limited quantities, looks like Falcon NW got their hands on some as they are offering systems with this configuration. Rumor has it the Asus board will hit mass market sometime after the holidays.

The AMD PCIe Mobo's will supposedly cost about 75% more then an equivlant non PCIe board, around $200 at initial release. Throw in a second video card (Geforce 6600, 6800GT or 6800 ultra) and your looking at close to a grand to upgrade to PCIe if you want to be an early adopter.